Originally Posted by VegasJen

Ya, that's something I struggle with. How to know how many gears a shifter is designed for. I have seen advertisements for 8, 9, 10 and as many as 11 speeds. I have to assume that's just the rear cassette. I haven't gone that in depth with playing with my bikes yet so I don't really know how all that works. Can you just swap out different number of speeds depending on what you're doing? I mean, I assume that it does have to match your shifter. But I'm just saying if, for instance, you do a lot of hills and you want more options, you just swap (as an example) an 8 speed cassette and shifter for 10 speed? Easy peasy?

I spend a lot of years working in the engineering field, so I'm pretty mechanical. I'm not afraid to do my own work. But bikes are still a new platform for me. Learning a lot, fast.

Of course I do. The question is, are you too smart to figure out what I said?